


Adventures in Extreme Gardening

by Sans_Souci



Series: Not Enough Brain Cells To Go Around [2]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Adulthood for dummies, Brotherhood--only you don't like each other as people, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sans_Souci/pseuds/Sans_Souci
Summary: Dante and Vergil's Not So Excellent Adventures in the Underworld:Not that he would say so out loud. But he could tell that Vergil could tell. For every whoop and holler that Dante gave, Vergil would scowl and pretend that he totally was not enjoying dicing hellspawn creatively while trying to one-up his brother. No, Dante didn’t like Vergil as a person and Vergil pretty much despised everything Dante tried to be, but they were brothers.
Relationships: Dante & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Series: Not Enough Brain Cells To Go Around [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1548841
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27





	Adventures in Extreme Gardening

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You didn’t have to come.” The stem of the Qliphoth stretched endlessly above them, corpse-grey and just about as appealing from this angle. At the base was a warren of building-sized roots that looked like a fortress. A very thorny fortress.

“Yeah?” Dante’s shrug was a poem written in practiced nonchalance. “Well, I had time. Business wasn’t exactly buzzing of late.”

Vergil sincerely doubted that Dante had just come along because he was bored. Which begged the many questions that he did not really want answered.

They were twins, differing life paths notwithstanding. The undercurrent of what was not said lay between them like a river that neither one of them was going to talk about or attempt to cross while still sporting drying blood splatters from the last battle they had fought on the way down through the portal. (More flaming bats and some species of raptor-like creature.)

 _It’s called denial_ said that internal voice that was still recognisably V. His human side possessed all the ironic awareness that the demonic side did not. And another part of experiencing humanity had been akin to several decades of pop culture shoved through his brain like a pre-chilled ice-pick. It was as though V had deliberately absorbed all that he could during his brief sojourn in the world of the living--

 _As the children say these days--duh._ The voice was getting less distinct with every moment, but that only because V was integrating himself into every neuron. Soon, all of this internal nattering would be Vergil’s.

He shuddered to think. But it was all part of regaining the part of himself he had thrown away. And it drowned out the other voice that was insisting, _demanding_ that he give all this up and finish what he started. _The wall between dimensions was in tatters; it would just take a little more--_

Clamping down on that particular voice, Vergil wonder if he would go mad before the two parts would just shut up or quit trying. But he was tenacious, therefore they would be just as tenacious.

_Oh joy._

Vergil looked around in vain for something, anything really, to distract himself. But this dimension was both boring and alienating at the same time for all his familiarity with it. The sky was the colour of nothing and there was no real sun or moon to mark the passage of time. Beyond the fights. Beyond the countless battles both verbal and physical--

Vergil could feel his headache getting worse as the part of him that was Urizen howled that he should just stab Yamato into Da--

From the corner of his eye, he could see his brother, not-quite marching in step with him as they followed a road that was not actually paved with good intentions but was going straight into Hell anyway. Dante had promised that . . . _boy_ , after all, to keep an eye on his errant father.

_That’s you, by the way._

Vergil did not need psychic abilities to guess Dante was watching for him to slip up again. After all, he was two for two when it came to opening up gates to the Underworld. Hardly a _trustworthy_ character.

_He has just cause. But he could also be making sure that you don’t run off . . ._

Run? Away from Dante’s painfully good intentions? Away from the . . . _son_ he had never known or wanted? Away from facing up to the consequences of his actions?

Vergil cringed inwardly. Running away was the action of a frightened child. The adult thing to do would be to face the music. Take responsibility.

Assuming his son-- _Nero_ , that was his name--even wanted to have anything to do with him after what might have seemed like a second abandonment. Assuming that Dante would trust him . . .

Trust had to be earned, he knew that now. But he didn’t have to like it. The same way Vergil did not have to like his brother and his never-ending quest to thwart his plans.

_He still refers to you as his brother. Perhaps he doesn’t just want you around because of Nero . . ._

That was new. Had his human side got over all that jealousy that formed a large cornerstone of his personality?

The sneer in V’s tone was barely present now. _Hardly. Maybe he sees us as his responsibility. Or maybe he wants to make up for lost time . . ._

They were not getting any younger, that was true.

 _You’re both idiots and I’m still part of you._ The acerbic edge was still there and Vergil was forced to admit that he did resent Dante. His brother was able to forgive so easily the many times Vergil had attempted to outright kill him.

_Like I said--all idiots._

And his brother had a very punchable face. The fact that it was also mostly _his_ face--plus a decade or two--prevented Vergil from voicing this thought because Dante would definitely come up with the obvious rejoinder.

Vergil plodded on. The blood of tens of thousands (give or take) screamed in his veins, temporarily drowning out the other two voices. Perhaps someday soon, they would have their vengeance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dante wished that this was his first time in the Underworld sometimes. But after the first few mobs of hell insects and abominations that looked like they might have been former demons only skinned and turned inside out, he supposed that he was glad of his prior experiences.

Time was _funny_ here. As was the perception of distance and space if one did not have a genetic bent or the demonic heritage to spatially process this other dimension without a severe case of motion sickness (at the very least). Could drive a normal human bonkers in a matter of days. Except that they would never know how much time had passed. Or if they had passed that stunted dead tree before a few turns back several times before.

So sue him, he was a city-boy at heart.

He was letting Vergil lead because his brother was still more familiar with the Underworld’s particular topography despite the years of brainwashing and not being entirely himself. It could have been hours or days since they had dropped in through the portal at the base of the Qliphoth--the only thing Dante was sure of was that their objective lay ahead like the world’s ugliest hedge and it felt _good_ fighting next to Vergil.

Not that he would say so out loud. But he could tell that Vergil could tell. For every whoop and holler that Dante gave, Vergil would scowl and pretend that he totally was not enjoying dicing hellspawn creatively while trying to one-up his brother. No, Dante didn’t like Vergil as a person and Vergil pretty much despised everything Dante tried to be, but they were brothers.

They were twins and not even a lifetime apart could stop them from falling into a familiar pattern. Fight each other, fight the rest of the world--even if the rest of the world back then had been the other kids in the village; young but rightfully suspicious of the boys that did not attend school with the others.

It had been for their own safety and the safety of everyone else. As children, their strength had already been decidedly not-human. Just one lapse in the control that their parents had painstaking taught them would have resulted in broken bones or worse. So they had tried not to engage, because their mother had begged them not to and their father would not approve of them using their skills on the soft humans, but the other children had been stubborn too.

It had been their strategy back then to chase off the village boys before they could see that the twins were healing from their cuts and bruises almost immediately. Regular children did not walk away from falling out of trees with broken arms, nor did they heal by dinner time. They knew themselves to be different back then.

They had never belonged--not back then and not now. Especially when their hybrid blood marked them as targets. Mundus’ gigantic hate-boner for their father had sorta made sure of that.

“I swear, if the next one talks and starts their rant with _Sons of Sparda_ again,” Dante huffed as he hefted his sword again. The last combatants had not been that strong but they had been annoyingly persistent. Maybe that was why he had been thinking about childhood scraps.

“First one to cut the blabbermouth’s head off gets the next point,” Vergil said from where he was flicking off ichor from the Yamato and sheathing the blade in one elegant move.

“You’re on!” Dante looked around in an exaggerated fashion. “But is there anything like a pizza joint nearby? Or even any kinda take-out? All this shish-kabobbing is making me hungry.”

The energies of the slain kept them fuelled up but nothing could beat a pepperoni and extra meat pizza (extra cheese, special sauce, hold the olives). That was the other problem about this place--Dante was human enough to miss eating real food.

Vergil just rolled his eyes harder and moved on because he knew that Dante was being annoying on purpose.

Dante really did want pizza though. Well, maybe after cutting down the Qliphoth . . . and plotting to get them both out of here.

Yeah, _both_ of them. Because if Vergil was sincere about trimming the weed so that the two worlds could be safely separated, Dante could do actual long-term planning. _Longer_ term planning.

Dante forgave relatively easily, but he was not going to trust his brother just yet. Not completely at any rate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vergil got the next point because the subsequent waves of Blades, Empusa and things that looked like bony wheels with flaming spikes were led by a particularly verbose minor lording of a region of the Underworld that was as difficult to find as it was unpronounceable if you had only one tongue (unforked).

Yamato found both their tongues a split second after they had started with “Sons of--”

“They didn’t quite finish though,” Dante pointed out in the aftermath of the battle.

Standing in the middle of a charnel house of blood, bone and entrails, Vergil snorted under his breath, well aware that his twin could hear him. He was certain that he had accounted for more than half of the demons slain. Dante could not always keep up with his speed, but he made up for it in raw power and a maddening array of Devil Arms. Chainsaw-motorcycles were a kind of improbably outrageous weapon that his brother _would_ have.

Another part of him admitted that they were useful to have while mowing down overgrown demonic foliage. (Not that he would ever let his brother know that.)

And yet another memory resurfaced--of his brother, wielding a Devil Arm in the shape of an electric guitar that controlled . . . electric bats. The memory should have been bitter, but all Vergil felt now was a pang of what he was rapidly realising was _regret_ for the years--decades, really--lost.

“What else was that going to end with?” Vergil asked, pulling himself out of that dark place with a mental shrug. He could not afford potentially costly distractions now. “Like you said, it was annoying.”

“True. Not very original of them.” Idly turning over one corpse in his path with the tip of his massive blade, his twin twisted about to look at him. “Any idea if we’re any closer?”

Vergil turned to face the next rocky hillock where the growth was thickest. “There. Once past this area, we’ll be at the very roots of the Qliphoth.”

“Oh goody,” Dante sighed and stretched. “Any idea how to clear all of them?”

“The way you’ve been doing it until now.” No doubt the Qliphoth had put down a number of stubborn roots by now. It had been well-nourished after all.

“I hate weeding,” Dante said, echoing his childhood self.

“I didn’t like it either.” Vergil was surprised at himself for offering up that morsel of shared experience. They did not have their mother’s green thumb, obviously.

“You didn’t complain when you got weeding duty.”

“I just wanted to get it over with.” Scenting the air, Vergil readied himself for an attack. The Qliphoth was not going to go down easily. “Some weeds are persistent though.”

“Geez, you could have warned me,” Dante grumbled as the thorny tendrils erupted at their feet.

“Now where would the fun be in that?” The rhetorical question hung in the air as Vergil teleported away from the descending barbs.

Having Yamato back in his hands felt . . . good and natural. He would concentrate on that for now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The vampire tree was annoyingly canny. It probably knew that its blood-draining days were numbered and had started to defend itself. One more complication to deal with while trying to end this herbaceous threat to the world.

Dante was no good at plans. That was Vergil’s forte. But he could trim the Qliphoth’s spiny tendrils just fine.

“So what you’re saying is--we use the parasites?” he hollered over the dust clouds raised by the thrashing demonic root-things as they hacked their way through the thicket.

“It should work.” Laconic as ever, his twin decimated the thorns that were spiritedly trying to stab them both with his trademark speed.

“Uh, hate to break it to ya, but I only got one of those squirmy little hatchlings left!” Dante dodged the two-foot long barb coming for his head and slashed at the base of the flailing tendril.

“This was never going to be a walk in the park, Dante.” Dishevelled and sporting more than a few rips on his coat, Vergil looked more human than he normally did. Though he was still outwardly unruffled--same old asshole Vergil.

“Yeah, screw that,” Dante muttered and Triggered. Scales provided a better defence against the sharp spines anyway. Launching himself up into the air, he cut a path through the needle-tipped thorns and aimed for the nearest root.

“Or you could do that,” Vergil admitted as the root system around them shuddered under the onslaught of Dante’s demonic form.

There was a flash as he too changed forms and a whirlwind of blue swords joined the fray.

After Triggering for what seemed like a dozen times, Dante was forced to stop. The advanced transformation was powerful and much easier to achieve in the Underworld, but the metamorphosis was still draining and did nothing to recover his stamina. Human-shaped once more, he flopped down on the burnt patch of ground in front of the next house-sized root and took stock.

For the first time, he felt tired. Not just tired in the too-old-for-this-shit way but tired as in tired-to-the-bone. Taking down the oversized houseplant was actually depleting his demonic reserves. And Vergil’s as well. Fighting each other prior to this had probably contributed to that.

Dante pretended not to notice as Vergil kept his winged demonic form for a few seconds more before reverting. Everything was a competition with his twin sometimes. _Most of the time_ , he corrected himself.

“Tired out already?”

“Conserving strength.” Dante yanked out the last hatching he had picked up and wedged it into a crevice near where the massive root had burrowed into the hard-packed ground. “Go on little wormy, do your thing.”

Vergil sat down a moment later, appearing perfectly at ease despite his travel-stained appearance and the fact that his knees, like Dante’s, were probably a bit wobbly at the moment after the last transformation. “Somewhere underneath us should be where the Qliphoth’s primary tap root is.”

“So these aren’t even the main roots?” Despite himself, Dante could not help but feel all his aching bones. Vergil might not be much better if he was any judge. There was a smear of dirt across the bridge of his nose and he had not bothered to rearrange his hair back into his normal style.

It would be easier to stay in demon form for this. Which was precisely why Dante had reverted back. The draw of their demonic heritage was too great, here in the Underworld.

“I’m not sure, but the primary root should be close to a source of power.” Vergil too was feeling the effects of extreme weeding. For one thing, he was volunteering information unasked now.

Dante pondered through this briefly. Enough power to hold open the portals to the human world and draw all those nasties over.

“We might find out soon enough.” Turning back to the root, which was going promisingly pale at the base, Dante planted the Devil Sword and rose to his feet. “Let’s start digging then. Here’s a good place to start as any.”

A few large-ish detonations later and they were through the first layer of whatever passed for soil here and in an underground cavern of sorts. The Qliphoth had grown deep and created a wide space under the surface of the Underworld that resembled an unholy sort of cathedral, buttressed by five-storey tall roots.

And there was a river running beneath those roots. ( _Of course_ there was a river.) It ran thick and sluggish with the life force of thousands. There was an unnatural sheen on its surface--not the type of thing that tempted people to dip a single toe in to test the temperature.

Glancing at his twin, he saw the tell-tale stillness that told him Vergil too was getting flashbacks to another river, decades ago. Fucked-up decisions had been made there and Dante thought there might have been regret in his brother’s eyes--

Or perhaps he really was the king of wishful thinking. Vergil had been perfectly willing to skewer him over his half of the amulet after all. Best they get on with it.

It was going to be just a little more complicated than a smash and run though. Dante should have known that with his luck.

Up close, the power at their feet _pulled_ at the side of them that called this place home. The river was _power_ , pure and undiluted, distilled from the lives of countless victims. And the Qliphoth was rooted in that power.

Dante looked at his brother again. This would be a temptation to any demon. Heck, even he felt it--the desire to transform, absorb all that like a junkie doing lines and find the top demon in this plane to beat into a greasy pulp.

“Worried, Dante?” Vergil asked with a smile that was nothing but barred teeth.

“With you? Always.” Dante felt his teeth elongate even as he resisted his instincts.

The thing was, the next most powerful demon in the vicinity was Vergil.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So close . . . So much power. Vergil felt himself beginning to transform and he could not blame Urizen for this--not this time.

With a roar that was practically feral, he spread his wings and propelled himself upwards--not at his twin, but at the largest cluster of roots that were planted in that river.

He struck with all the thwarted rage of his teenage self. Spectral blades carved through the sickly glow that emanated from the roots in a furious whirlwind that was fuelled mostly by a towering anger.

Where was all this power when he needed it the most?

Logically, he knew that only the Lord of the Underworld could take control of this morass of power, but he was not going to be rational about this after what had seemed like an eternity of being Mundus’ slave.

Not when a part of him knew full well that Mundus was no longer in control. Not when he, Vergil, had this power in his grasp for the briefest of moments--

But he had to give it up. If only to preserve a world where humans wrote their poetry and lived their mayfly lives, unaware of how fortunate they were.

Nearby, a red streak blazed like a mobile inferno as his twin decimated the roots by ploughing straight through them. He never had to ask--his brother would have his back. That elicited a completely different emotion that he channelled back into useful anger.

Another building-sized root crumbled beneath his assault.

Foolish Dante--he had never asked for his brother’s pity or his help. But here they were, the Sons of Sparda, uniting to destroy the bridge between realms instead of bringing both worlds to their knees.

 _Protect the weak from their oppressors. The strongest blade exists for the defence of others--especially those that you value._ Those were the lessons that their father had taught them. The lessons that he had tossed aside in the blaze of his adolescent anger after Sparda had left. His appreciation of them had been belated and required his human half to interpret.

Yamato flickered and reduced another root into dust. Somewhere above them, an ominous crack was heard.

It was working. They just had to severe the all the main roots from where they were rooted in the river. There had to be at least several dozens of them--

His concentration could not waiver now as he summoned wave upon wave of spectral blades to cleave through the obdurate roots. But the strain of being in this form was beginning to get to him.

In the end, both he and Dante were just using their swords to hack their way through. Hardly elegant, but it matched his savage mood. There was a definite satisfaction involved in . . . cutting loose like this.

The thickest root crumbled before him and he had to growl in victory, teeth barred against this presumptuous--

Dante could still vocalise through his fangs--it took a lot more to shut his twin up than the collapse of a demon tree. “Vergil! This place is coming down!”

He could see that. Stones and rough clods of dark soil were raining down around them. Vergil roared in frustration as a man-sized chunk of Qliphoth grazed him on the way down.

A grinding, groaning creak answered him and the world stood still for a moment before the last root gave up the ghost. The structure barely had time to turn pale and crumble before the cavern ceiling caved in from the unsupported weight of the Qliphoth stem.

The sight of it falling might have been fairly impressive but Vergil never saw it as Dante’s full weight cannoned into him and they were flying almost as fast as the speed of sound--

Which caught up with them as the thunderclap from the fall of the Qliphoth smashed through the air like a moving wall.

There was the sensation of being flung like a ragdoll by an irate giant toddler--earth erupting around them as they barrelled through the hard crust of the surface--

There was no sound after that, probably because they were temporarily deafened by the grinding, catastrophic death throes of the Qliphoth. No light because of the ash and dust that settled thickly in the air.

Scent and sight returned first. Along with the sensation of being very sore after their unplanned crash landing despite the toughness of their demonic hides.

Lying the rubble with his twin’s not-insignificant mass on top of him, Vergil stared up at the nothing-coloured sky through the dust and wondered for the thousandth time--

A muffled sound interrupted his thoughts and he realised that Dante was speaking. As well as he could with a mouth full of fangs anyway. Vergil should have been wary with those teeth and sharp horns so near the vicinity of his stomach . . . but he wasn’t.

“What?” he mumbled after a moment spent tracking the progress of a dissipating dust plume. His eardrums had probably healed by now. “Speak up, Dante--”

The horned and scale-covered head lifted fractionally. Dante’s voice was still a bit tinny or perhaps they were really that exhausted, but he got the message through.

“Come back with me, Vergil. There’s no pizza down here and you’ll be bored after, like, one day here coz there isn’t anyone here worth your time.”

_So that you don’t get bored enough to try this shit again . . ._

A request. One that Dante had obviously been waiting to voice for a while now. And everything that remained unsaid in that request.

“. . . All right.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The main part of their mission was done. So that was a plus. One less demonic tree to plunge the world into chaos and certain doom.

It wasn’t that difficult to slip out of the Underworld when one possessed a dimension-piercing blade. It was a bit more difficult when every demon in the vicinity was alerted to their present location when the Qliphoth fell. Or just alerted to their very scaly Son-of-Sparda-ness whenever they reverted to the form that made moving through this hellscape easier.

There was the also the matter of finding the right place to carve a path out of this dimension and into the human world so that they did not land in the middle of a volcano or stuck in solid rock. Or wind up wearing their insides on their outsides like some of those demons.

There was an art to it--or so Vergil claimed. Dante just knew that he had been lucky the last few times to escape without being turned inside out by conflicting realities.

So they were running from the hordes of the Underworld. And fighting the hordes every step of the way. While trying to find the sweet spot where Vergil could ideally open a path without causing a demonic infestation in the human world. Or tearing down the divider between the two dimensions. Dante (and the rest of the world) really did not need Vergil to succeed by accident after the last two times.

Deep in his rather battered soul, Dante had (dare he say it) hope. The hope of a kid that just wanted his twin back. The hope of a man that was too damn tired of losing family members. The sincere hope of someone that had set out to do one last duty and was just relieved that he had not needed to kill his brother.

Logically, Vergil did not deserve a reprieve for the things he had done. There were too many deaths laid at his door and the end of the world had almost been a thing both times. His brother had knowingly, deliberately, set out to murder people and destroy the barrier between worlds.

But there was another part of him that argued that Vergil needed saving (it sounded like their mother a lot of the time). That Vergil had been stuck at nineteen, frozen in a stage of arrested development while he sought to allay the fears of his eight-year old self. It matched a certain pattern that Dante recognised. It included the usual elements of large demonic things ripping through cities and the gates to the Underworld. The same stupid plan.

Vergil was wearing the same clothes that he had on the day he fell--chosen to fall--into this hellish plane too.

There were no superlatives to adequately describe the situation. Somehow Dante was now the older brother by virtue of having lived longer in this world while Vergil had drifted in and out of whichever reality was closest for who knew how long after the events of Temen-ni-gru and Mallet Island. The wrinkles on his face and the weird smoothness of Vergil’s supported this.

Everything he had done basically put him in the older brother role. Their roles had been switched for a very long time now. Even now, as he watched Vergil moving just a little ahead of him, Dante was planning. Plotting and calculating just how much he needed to incapacitate his twin so that he could get him through the gate if he decided to pull a fast one on him again. Cleaving his spine might slow him down a bit . . . they weren’t that young anymore.

Dante, unlike Vergil, had very few scruples when it came to combat. He was not above shooting his twin in the brainpan to knock him out for a few seconds. But he did worry that Vergil might not take it well. Or dodge because Vergil was _fast_.

And yet he wanted Vergil to make this choice fully cognizant of the consequences of what he chose to do. What he would lose if he did not come back with Dante. Instead of the half-baked decision of a teenager drunk on their own hubris like the last time the choice had been set before him.

_Don’t be such a frickin’ sore loser again . . ._

The kid had beaten him, fair and square. Dante could imagine Vergil’s nasal rejoinder to that. He mentally flipped his brother and his excuses off.

Sure, Dante had worn him down first, but the skill gap was still there. Vergil had actually been super nonplussed by the reveal that he had an actual son. Nero had won because he had wanted, above all and beyond all, to have his blood kin back--a family.

Because Nero wanted what he never had. Answers to questions he had been harbouring all his life. Even if his kin was . . . Vergil, arm-ripper extraordinaire. And Dante, absentee asshole uncle extraordinaire.

But Dante could understand. Nothing was more important than family to the humans . . .

It was then that Dante realised that he had become his own mother. Not that he could ever fill her shoes. The damn heels alone were a difficulty level on par with wrangling a pair of boys with too much energy and super-healing abilities.

Eva had always wanted them to take care of each other. Dante imagined that their mother would not be very impressed with their efforts to date.

_Uh, no, I didn’t manage to stop Vergil from falling into the Netherworld. Sorry about that. I also kinda fought him three times without knowing it was him. And just the other day . . ._

Dante honestly thought he would have had to put Vergil down for good this time. Thank whatever for Nero--Eva would have loved him. Heck, their father would have been proud of the kid.

Now if he could just get Vergil back to his--their--world, he might not fuck up every single relationship in his life.

Staring at his brother’s back, Dante wondered what Sparda would have done.

_Let him screw up like an adult. If he’s going to stay or go, let him make that choice on his own._

Thanks, non-existent-Dad-voice.

Being the adult was hard. Dante never liked doing it. And he was hardly the only adult in the room at the moment. The stakes had never been higher. Because if Vergil decided to stick around the Underworld and try to take over--

“Here,” Vergil stated as he stopped at the base of what looked like a sandstone cliff, only without the colour and biodiversity of one in the other dimension. He appeared to be tasting the air before drawing the Yamato. “Keep watch--I need to concentrate.”

So Dante did, while also keeping one eye on his twin. He had done the mature thing and not made any jokes about getting old. Jokes that would probably get thrown back in his face by Nero when they got back.

The air hummed and Yamato sang at a frequency that the average human would not be able to hear. Reality warped and hissed as Vergil’s blade cleaved a gash into the world.

 _Okay, kiddo, you might get your old man back . . ._ Dante’s grip on the hilt of his sword had not loosened. _Even if I have to cut his legs off and haul him out of here . . ._

The temporary portal before them looked like all the other portals to his demonic vision--like a bleeding wound that seriously needed to be patched up.

Dante was totally not holding his breath as Vergil surveyed his handiwork and gave a slight nod. The breath he was totally not holding was released the moment Vergil looked back at him with what appeared to be an ironically-lifted eyebrow and stepped through the gate.

Getting through the portal wasn’t an undignified scramble at all. But once in that space between realities, Dante definitely felt like someone took a blender to his brain before everything went a bit loopy for a while.

Consciousness and the actual sensation of having all his limbs attached in the right places came back around the same time.

“Pheghm,” he wheezed. “Fffewwww . . . I wanna speak ta the captain about that flight . . .”

An exasperated snort made him open his now functional eyes. Yup, that was an actual sky above them--all blue with white fluffy clouds. There was grass underneath him, poking the skin of his arms. Somewhere behind him, the echoes of another world were fading away. And sprawled face down in the ground the next to him was Vergil, who was probably also recovering from the aftereffects of a particularly rough transit.

The rustle of grass underfoot made both of them tense up, but Dante relaxed as a familiar presence made herself known. Her shadow fell across them as the woman walked up, red braid swaying in the salt-scented breeze.

“Oh hey, Lucia,” he started brightly. Only to have her turn her back on them and stride downslope with what might have been a disappointed or disapproving sigh.

“She knows you, obviously,” Vergil commented sardonically. Yup, he was fine.

“Matier predicted that this would happen,” Lucia said without breaking stride or turning around. “Are you coming or not?” 

“What a nice warm welcome,” Dante muttered, wincing as he pulled himself upright. He wasn’t up to dealing with sharp-eyed matriarchs at the moment, but he probably would need her help in getting off Dumary island if he didn’t want to fly the entire way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


End file.
